Posted
by
Soulskill
on Monday March 19, 2012 @05:42PM
from the no-interns-were-harmed-(yet)-in-the-making-of-this-show dept.

xwwt writes "Wil Wheaton is working with Felicia Day on a new show called Tabletop, which will air on the YouTube Channel Geek and Sundry. The show will be about board games and gaming in general. This is how he describes it: 'My ulterior motive with Tabletop is to show by example how much fun it is to play boardgames. I want to show that Gamers aren't all a bunch of weirdoes who can't make eye contact when they talk to you, and that getting together for a game night is just as social and awesome as getting together to watch Sportsball, or to play poker, or for a LAN party, or whatever non-gamers do with their friends. I want to inspire people to try hobby games, and I want to remove the stigma associated with gaming and gamers.' The first show airs April 2nd."

I'm a gamer, and there is flat-out no way this stigma will be removed in my lifetime. When you get right down to it, we're playing pretend. Unless it's couched in layers of indirection, that's just not going to be socially acceptable until the average person has a lot more leisure time.

Board gaming with friends is nothing like your WoW addiction. One is interactive with in-person friends and requires you to have some, the other probably is social retardation to a degree. Personally, I'd have more fun going the WoW route, but don't dare. Frankly, I think Will would make more money if he'd just break down and do the gay pron.

The problem with trying to make watching other people play board games is the excitement is all in their heads. Their imagination is what's making it such an exciting evening, as well as their in-crowd banter which is all about their own personal jokes. Hard to convey that to a watching non-participating audience.

Physical sports are exciting for a lot of people because there's a lot of fast visual action, people rushing around and crashing into each other, scoring goals, carrying out very visual actions. But games based on mind play? well... they are all in the mind. I don't see how games like chess, or bridge, or the like can be exciting spectator sports, unless you're really into that game yourself so a fan already? Occasionally I've seen poker on tv - incredibly boring for me because I don't understand the game, don't want to learn about it, and don't find the people particularly entertaining. I think tv board game coverage might be the same: fine if you're already a fan of scrabble, or monopoly, or dungeons and dragons... but otherwise? nothing to see, none of the visual pyrotechnics of car racing, top league basketball/football/downhill skiing (etc).

For video gamers it happened. When I started gaming, about 27 years ago, it was something only geeks did. Me and my friends were weird for wanting to play videogames. We were the outcast nerds. Now? Fucking everyone plays videogames. Frat bros love them some Call of Duty, the Sims is popular across all demographics but particularly with women, World of Warcraft had over 12 million active subscribers at one time.

Videogames are mainstream and it is just an assumption that most people under about 25 play them, and the age is growing all the time.

Could very well happen for table top games too. When you get down to it, they are just more complex and involved board games.

For a few years now, Wizards of the Coast has been running ads with variations of the idea that D&D is 'way more normal' than MMORPGS and such. The way they put it is something like "If you're sitting in your parent's basement and pretending to be an elf, you should at least invite a few friends over and order pizza!".
Really, in a world where people commonly sit in total physical isolation from other humans while getting their jollies from a PC screen for hours and hours, doesn't throwing a party for a few firends and fixing some refreshments sound more and more like what everyone else does. Hey, you might even use tabletop games as an excuse to clean up the place a bit!